Stardate: January 31, 2020
In a lot of ways we’ve saved the best for last. Going on the archeological dig and spending time digging in the dirt and looking for artifacts was so exciting! And how fun and how amazing to be able to be in Israel, in the place where the Maccabees were. Where history was made. And to be a part of an archeological dig, not just to see it but to actually participate in it. Absolutely phenomenal. After so many days of stuffing my brain and working my body and trying to understand and to hear and to work through the spiritual changes; to be able to play in the dirt was a reversion to childhood. I used to love to play in the dirt when I was a kid. It reminded me of the scripture that says, “when I became an adult I put away childish things.” In some ways I reverted right back to childhood playing in the dirt. The first time I put my pick into the dirt and dug it forward to loosen the dirt and put my hands in and felt something – a shard of pottery – I wanted to stand up and jump for joy. I had found something ancient in the dirt.
The development where I live is called Battle Park. All the streets are named for Civil War battles, but the Civil War took place here, on the land where my house sits. It’s not unusual for neighbors to find artifacts in their yard. I have not found any in my yard that I’m aware of, maybe I just thought that they were trash left by the previous owner of my house. I’ve not found artifacts in my yard, but I know that they quite possibly exist here. The other thing that really struck me about being at Tel Maresha was when we were able to go into the caves that had already been excavated. A couple things that I want to make sure that I noted about them; when we went into an aviary there were holes in the wall that show where pigeons were raised because they use the pigeons for food but they also used the poop from the pigeons for fertilizer for olive trees. Our guide told us that it has been scientifically proven, in modern science, that pigeon poop is actually one of the best things for olive trees to have them grow well and to produce olives well. The fact that these ancient people figured that out sometimes amazes me. How often we think that we in modern times, in modern society have some sort of ability, some sort of advanced brain power or “figure out” power or scientific method or some means of coming up with better ideas and better plans. Then to find that the ancient world was not as backward not as less understanding as we sometimes want them to be. I think we want them to be this unintelligent group of people and then when I put that in a spiritual context, when I look at that and I think of scripture of ancient texts of ancient people and and how we put upon them this great understanding of life and of spirituality. But they are so much further advanced almost, in a way, than we are and yet we put upon them this idea that they are less. It’s an interesting dichotomy for me, how we navigate, how we think about people in ancient times and people today which brings me back to Solomon and the scripture that says “there’s nothing new under the Sun”. It all just kind of comes full circle around on itself. I’ve digressed, but I want to make a second point about being in those tunnels. Our guide showed us channels, and it was raining when we were there and you could see the waters traversing down these channels to go into a cistern because being a people of the desert, rain was important and water was important. Being able to store that water and hold it until the rains came in the rainy season again was so important to survival and one of the places we couldn’t go because was full of water and a the way we saw these channels going down by the steps and and into the water repository, into the cistern and she made a comment that I think is very important which is that of these these systems were put in place thousands of years ago but we in modern time can’t figure out how to stop them. They just continue to work and we can’t figure out how to not have them work. It goes back to this idea that we think of the ancient people as being so backward, so less evolved, so less prepared and yet they were ingenious. In some ways I think more ingenious than we are with our with our technology and with our inability to use our brains and our bodies to figure stuff out. Definitely the archeological dig is a highlight of this trip and something that I will forever cherish having the opportunity to do.
We went to Ramal for lunch and to say goodbye to Jared. It was another meal of bread and hummus. I may never eat bread and hummus again, but I’ve learned to have an appreciation for it. Anyway, so what I want to say about the city was how obviously depressed it was. How it was obviously a very poor town just from walking through, but we walked through the market and I was struck as I have been in all of the markets that we have walked through which seemed to have been ample, at the color and the way that their fruits and vegetables and food is laid out. It is beautiful and colorful, an amazing looking display of food. I compare that to our grocery stores where we buy our food, even a farmers market where we buy our food and the way that the the food looked so different and looked so much more colorful and pretty and appealing. then a lot of what we are presented with in the United States. I also found that to be true of a lot of the meals that we were served. They were very colorful meals with a very pretty presentation. Even though it wasn’t food that I necessarily enjoyed, there was definitely a healthy look to the food and to the presentation that you don’t always see at home.
I love the town of Jaffa and wish that I had an opportunity to just explore it. I would have liked to have seen it on my own or with a group or to truly tour the city. I will say that I did not enjoy the two narratives today. It felt put on and it felt as if it just rehashed information that we had just spent two weeks delving deeply into. And the two guides really were doing a surface act. I was a little bored and a little just wanting to explore the city. For me, in my call to ministry, in my call to go to seminary, my call to answer God in this way I very much identify with Jonah. And Jaffa is the city where supposedly Jonah got on the boat and headed to Tarsus instead of going to Nineveh. I really identify with Jonah. I feel that I spent a lot of time in my life and a lot of diversion in my life trying to run away from God and trying to run away from the call that God was putting on my life. To be in this place, I really wanted to touch the water. I wanted to touch the beach. I wanted to make that physical and present connection. Not that I think that it really matters, and not that I particularly think that the story of Jonah is real but it reminds me that in my first reflection on this trip or maybe it was the second day. It was the day that it rained so much that I also made reference to Jonah and the whale and knowing that it wasn’t a true story, but if you took me to the place that I would feel something there. When we ended our trip at Jaffa I found that to be a very true thing. I was there and I wanted to touch it and I wanted to feel it. I wanted to have the quiet time to ruminate on what that means to my life and what that means to my going forward in this call to ministry. It was a very special time for me to be in Jaffa and I wish that I had been able to spend it a little differently.
We met with Khader and he talked about LGBTQIA life in Tel Aviv and in Israel. I just want to note one thing that he said that I think is very important which is Tel Aviv is not Israel and Israel is not Tel Aviv. Someone later tonight questioned what he meant by that and I think it is just like in the United States. There are pockets of gay communities, There are pockets of acceptance and the ability to be open and to be loved and to be who you are and Tel Aviv is one of those pockets. But you can’t judge all of Israel based on what is happening in Tel Aviv. The flip side of that is you can’t judge Tel Aviv by what is happening in all of Israel. I think that that’s an important thing to remember as we are moving forward in ministry and in life and in political ways and as we look at Social Justice even. In understanding where we are and what the climate is and being aware of our surroundings and who we are talking to and how we’re talking and what is and is not acceptable in that place. That’s not to say that all things can’t move forward because we all move forward at the pace that we move. Some places, and some people and things move at a snail’s pace and some gallop forward like deer. It’s just this forward movement that rushes forward so fast. Again I’m back to the water analogy, that rushing water can totally make a channel through rock, through solid rock, through rock that would require beating but it takes time and it takes patience to let that rushing water move over the rock and to make a channel. Sometimes I think we get so impatient with wanting Social Justice. We want it to happen now and realizing that the patience to let it happen as it happens is sometimes a spiritual practice that is difficult. Just as taking a sabbath is a spiritual practice for me that is difficult because I want to power ahead. This seems like the perfect transition, the perfect segue to talk about Shabbat.
We walked to Shabbat service this evening. We had anticipated that we would take the bus and then walk back but it turned out to be this lovely walk through Tel Aviv. I’m glad we got to walk it. I wasn’t excited about it to start with, but as it happened I realized that you really don’t see the world in the same way driving past it as you see it walking through it. It’s a very good analogy for so much of life. So much of Social Justice work, and so much of the work that we do in ministry, we are sometimes tempted to drive past and see things in the method of a drive by and yet you really have to walk through, you have to take your time and put your feet on the ground in the place that you want to see, that you want to understand and that you want to be a part of.
We arrived at the, I’m remiss to call it a synagogue, but we arrived for Shabbat service and I must admit I was a bit surprised that we were just going down into a basement. It was a nondescript basement building, and when we got into the space it was so small and, a little bit cramped and I was like, “oh my what is gonna happen here?” but I very quickly realized, as the service was going on, that we were really the preponderance of people who were there. We are a large group, we are 27ish people and in any small group, we take up a lot of that space. Almost immediately there was the acknowledgement of the different faith groups that were present and the differences in the way that we worship God and when it came time to light the candle, there was the invitation to have someone Muslim and someone Christian and someone Jewish to light this candle together. There was this understanding of unity that was very powerful in this demonstration of a religious unity, of inner faith. The whole service was like that, the invitation to interpret the story, the invitation to participate, to be a part, to truly be integrated into this worship space. It’s something I think we’ve experienced throughout this trip. We experienced it in Jerusalem at the Shabbat service, we experienced it in Ramallah at Christian services, we experienced it praying with Rami, we experienced it in all of the different places that have welcomed us into their space and told us their story and invited us to be a part of their community even if only for a short period of time. The extravagant welcome which is I think a term that we use in Christian society a lot; that we want to offer extravagant welcome, extravagant grace extravagant participation and drawing together. It was a perfect end I think to the journey that we’ve gone on together to find this place of extravagant welcome. I enjoyed the service very much and I think that it very deeply spoke to my soul and it makes me very much want to find a way, and maybe I talked of this earlier when we we’d spent Shabbat with the rabbinical students, that I really want to find a way to make sabbath a part of my spiritual practice. Maybe that means finding my own Shabbat service in town and finding a way to participate in that in a regular way. In a lot of ways I’m sad to go home. There is so much that I feel that I didn’t quite get the time to see and to experience in the deep and rich way that I would like to and I always thought of this as a trip of a lifetime, something I would do once and never do again. Now as I reflect on this and as I am back home and had some time to rest, I now think that it might be a trip that I would like to take again and spend the time sitting on the beach in Jaffa and spend the time ruminating, not feeling that I am rushing from one thing to the next. Not that rushing was a bad thing, it allowed us to see much more than we could have if we had spent the contemplative ruminating time, but it’s something that I feel that I need to be able to do justice and to to see the place in not an overview way but in a true experience of it. It’s been a wonderful trip, I think that it is not a stretch to call it life changing for my political views on the Middle East, life changing in my inner faith understanding and life changing in the way that I will approach ministry and approach the way that I’m working with and dealing with Social Justice issues in my own world, in my own community, There are so many parallels and so many ways that I have learned and grown and stretched and I don’t remember who said it, but it was a reference to opening the chest and I wish I could remember what the word was, but it it is this opening of the chest, this opening to God and opening to this experience.
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